Main menu

Journalism about pwnage

Dog Builds an Empire: X3 Albion Prelude Chapter Eleven

Just a quick note: I will be switching the release of new episodes to Sundays, as I’m lazy and that will give me more free time to write. Anyways, many of you probably have the weekends off from work or whatever, so you can read it right when it comes out.

I LIKE PASTA

This time, I manage to avoid detonating in space from rapidly expanding solar plant modules, or more likely in this case, to detonate in space from metal spaghetti ending up all over the flippin’ place.

I placed the hub correctly this time, and everything else was perfectly placed, for that matter.

And then I repeat it, making a nice, symmetrical complex, with the hub positioned in a manner which would minimize Discoverers running into everything, and more importantly (although less frequently) freighters running into everything.

And so this pretty industrial beast was born.

It took some THINKing to BUILD this, and admittedly some FIGHTing and TRADEing too. Mainly the latter were involved.

Also, sorry if the quality and size are low, I took these with F12 instead of how I usually take them with PRINT SCREEN.

Now I have to supply it. I put all of the Mercury’s which haven’t been successful trading and/or sitting around, and have them start supplying it.

Then I return to stock trading, as I often do.

After letting my complex run for a while, it becomes apparent that supplying it is becoming a problem. I need food and silicon, but I’ve got this problem covered; let’s build more industrial things, and kill people to pass the time.

It’s time to turn my Cahoona bakery into a food ‘plex, so that way I’ll have a ‘plex supporting another ‘plex. Gettin’ all fancy now.

I Morag Tong-style hunt down the Mammoth (not Dark Brotherhood style, as I hate them) and tell him to take his sweet little peachy-cakes time shipping my station. This is the part of the story where I pass the time by killing people.

THIS IS NOT THE ORDER THE KILLING WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN IN!

After I take a break from X3 because of a game that may or may not be part of the Elder Scrolls series, which may or may not be one of my favorite series along side X, I come back to the game after reading X3 articles on Reddit, which made me want to play the game again.

Let’s see, I don’t quite remember WTF was going on, but I remember complexes being part of it… ah, amnesia. This is a fairly cliche thing for an awesome protagonist hero with lots of lasers to have.

I’m in the Shadowshard, which is my Centaur. (I had actually gotten the order of the Heavy Centaur and the regular Centaur wrong in the previous articles. Sorry. I’ll have to edit that, but I’m lazy right now.) I undock, and there are Terran stations here. Wut.

I don’t remember this, and that’s because I actually didn’t see them there last time I played. (I wasn’t away from X3 that long. Just, like, a week) So, I go shoot at them while reading the forums and chatting with my friend about reading the forums and shooting Terran stations.

The stations were a wheat farm and a silicon mine, both owned by Terrans. I flew to the mine first, opened fire on it, and the Steam Overlay kept the fire button held down for me. Then, I went to the farm, which was already under fire from several Argon ships.

*****

A little while later, my pretty little metal hunk of awesomesauce plasma guns comes screeching out of a gate in the war sectors.

There’s a few giant Terran capitals who want to say hello. I start screwing around trying to get a good screenshot of them, and inevitably, hilarity ensues.

Ironically, the only reason this happened was because I was screwing around trying to take a screenshot.

As the screenshot shows, this sucks.

My shield and hull, not for the first time, try to find a shortcut through the sea to the lands called Gameoverscreenia, but they run into a continent called I-got-my-frickin-reflexes-back-and-started-wiggling-a-space-U-Boat-between-a-stupid-amount-of-lasers-merica.

I should mention I did that at a comfortable speed of 68 whatevers/second because my hull was not whole. Oh yeah, and then the Claymores decided they wanted to shoot at me too.

I was fueled by the desire to not reload a save which took place twenty minutes earlier, while they were fueled by hate. Not wanting to reload saves is a much more powerful emotion, although it has some hate mixed in as a preservative and coloring.

More lasers are flying around me, as I’m spamming WASD keys making my space U-Boat do all kinds of ridiculous(ly awesome) maneuvers which a space U-Boat has no business doing whatsoever, as it’s supposed to be doing the shooting.

I decide to end this by pressing a magical key combination called “SHIFT+J”.

DO YOU LIKE YOUR NOVAS VANGUARDEN OR RAIDERED?

My ship goes Frrrrpooooof-ing out of the active killzone into a nearby war sector, which currently isn’t at war, but has a shipyard. Checking the shipyard, th0ugh, the price is pretty expensive to repair a partially exploded Corvette.

I figure I should start doing combat missions so I can get some reputation up, which would allow me to make lots of money later, while getting to pew-pew stuff.

After getting as close to home as my Jumpdrive’s fuel will take me, my ship is deposited from hyperspace into Elena’s Fortune. Not too far from the shipyard.

BWEEEEEP! Two pirate ships show up on the radar display. Flying over there at the speed of SETA, one of them is killed by a merchant’s escorts, but I chew into the other one, which is flying an Elite. He decides to bail though, as a few of my big blue fireballs explode on his ship.

I pull up next to the ship, and claim it. I debate whether to fly it personally, but my wisdom tells me to see if it has an important piece of equipment which makes life ten times easier: SETA.

I also find a combat mission which is hard level, and gives a good deal of money, but has a fifteen minute timer, which I don’t believe either of my ships currently with me are quite equipped for.

Nope, not much in the cargo bay. Hehe, you aren’t getting me this time. My little spacesuit doodles right back over to my nice big comfy M6, and I tell my new Elite to fly to the Cloudbase Southwest shipyard, which is also where I’m going for a specific reason.

For combat missions, I don’t really want to lug around in an M6 until I start fighting bigger enemies. Something faster, lighter, but which still packs a punch would be nice. I take to the EgoSoft forums.

I return with news of a mysterious ship which I’ve seen a ton of times called a Nova. But, which variation to pick?

I decide to buy a Vanguard initially, because of the better weapon generators it has. After further discussion on the forums, it sounds like the Raider is a good variety for the player to fly, as it’s a fair amount faster, so the idea is that you could dodge and intercept targets more effectively. I can buy any variant of a Nova everytime I close the stock market screen or let my complexes make me some good creds, so I’m really not worried how many different kinds of Novas I buy.

And then it’s back to building more complexes.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please give it a “like”, and subscribe (via email) to my blog or follow (via WordPress) to be quick to know when new articles are released. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you return!